Matiu/Somes Island, at 24.9 ha (62 acres), is the largest of three islands in the northern half of Wellington Harbour, New Zealand. It lies
3 km (1.9 mi) south of the suburb of Petone and the mouth of the Hutt River, and about 5 km (3.1 mi) northwest of the much smaller Makaro/Ward Island.
Legend has it that both Matiu and Makaro Islands received their original M?ori names from Kupe, the semi-legendary first navigator to reach New Zealand and get home again with reports of the new land. He named them after his two daughters (or, in some versions of the tale, nieces) when he first entered the harbour about 1000 years ago.
After European settlement the island was known for over a century as Somes Island. In 1839 it fell under the control of the New Zealand Company along with much of the greater Wellington region. The island was renamed after Joseph Somes, the company's deputy-governor and financier at the time. In 1997 however, the New Zealand Geographic Board assigned the official bilingual name of Matiu/Somes in recognition of the island's colourful European and M?ori histories.
Matiu/Somes became part of Lower Hutt in 1989, and came under the full control of the Department of Conservation ("DOC") as a scientific and historic reserve in August 1995. The island is free of introduced mammalian predators (such as stoats), an unusual state for an island so close to an urban centre
